A dozen people got off the train with Parker, and another two or three got on. He came down to the concrete last, the only passenger without luggage, and stood on the platform while the rest of them trudged up the stairs and the train jerked forward behind him. In his dark windbreaker and black chinos and heavy black shoes, he looked like some sort of skilled workman, freelancing, brought in by a contractor to do one specific job. Which he was.
The stairs were to his right, with the people slowly receding upward. Along the platform were three or four backless benches, and on one of them, down to the left, sat a dumpy man in a pearl-gray topcoat and hat, his back to the train now leaving as he gazed out and down at the river.
When the train was gone, Parker turned to look across the track at a chain-link fence, and a parking lot, and a steep hillside, and a curving steep street, and some old houses. One passenger, having climbed up this set of stairs, was now thudding down a second staircase over there, headed for the parking lot. He was rumpled, in his forties, wearing an anorak that was too heavy for this season, and carrying a thick heavy briefcase. He seemed to be muttering to himself.
Parker watched that fellow descend, and the man never looked in this direction. At the foot of the stairs, he turned and hurried along between the rows of cars, fishing his keys out of his pocket as he went. He hit his electronic opener and a Saab over there went beepand flashed its amber lights. The man reached his car, tossed the briefcase in the back, got behind the wheel, and drove out of there. In the car, his lips were still moving. He didn’t show interest in anything at all outside his own head. So there must be a college around here somewhere.
The Saab drove up the steep street and made the turn, and went out of sight. Then Parker walked along the platform to Cathman, who looked up and smiled and nodded. “Good afternoon,” he said.
The bench was long enough so they could both be on it with some space between. Parker sat next to Cathman and said, “You aren’t in the same business as Howell.”
Cathman laughed, self-conscious. “Heavens, no. Not at all. That’s why I neededMr. Howell. Or you. Or whoever it might be.”
“You just go around talking to people? In bars, and here and there?”
“Certainly not,” Cathman said, and gave Parker a sudden keen look. He said, “Mr. Parker, I don’t know your world very well, or your
business. But that doesn’t mean I’m a fool.”
“Uh huh.”
“I am not going to talk to an undercover policeman, believe me.”
“Maybe you are right now,” Parker told him.
Cathman smirked, and shook his head. “I was sure of Mr. Howell,” he said, “and I’m sure of you. Mr. Parker, do you gamble?”
“Not with people I don’t know.”
Cathman made a sudden irritated hand-gesture, sweeping away a misunderstanding. “I don’t mean that,” he said. “I mean gambling, legal gambling. Lotteries, betting parlors. Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Foxwood.”
Parker looked at him: “Foxwood?”
Cathman’s hand-wave this time was airy, dismissive. “Over in Connecticut,” he said. “On the Indian reservation, so state laws don’t apply. The casino there makes millions.”
Parker nodded. “So the Indians finally found a way to beat the white man.”
“My question was, do you gamble?”
“No.”
“May I ask why not?”
What did this have to do with anything? But Parker had learned, over the years, that when somebody wants to tell you his story, you have to let him tell it his own way. Try to push him along, speed it up, you’ll just confuse him and slow him down.
So the question is, why not gamble? Parker’d never thought about it, he just knew it was pointless and uninteresting. He said, “Turn myself over to random events? Why? The point is to try to control events, and they’ll still get away from you anyway. Why make things worse? Jump out a window, see if a mattress truck goes by. Why? Only if the room’s on fire.”
That was apparently the right answer. Cathman beamed like a man who’d won the turkey at the raffle. He said, “The reason you feel that way, Mr. Parker, if I may presume, and the reason Ifeel that way, is, we are not in despair. We are not bored and miserable with our own lives. We don’t pay twenty dollars every week for a cluster of numbers in the state lottery, in hopes we’re buying a new car, a new house, a new job, a new wife, better children and a firmer stomach. Gambling preys on misery, Mr. Parker, misery and discontent. Where the people are comfortable and confident, gambling does not flourish.”
Parker was beginning to see that Cathman was not a man with a job, he was a man with a cause. So why did he need a Howell, or a Parker? He said, “Tell me where you’re going with this.”
“Let me first tell you who I am,” Cathman said, and reached inside his topcoat. Parker tensed, looking at the Adam’s apple he’d hit, but what Cathman brought out was a small flat leather case. Opening it, he took out a business card and handed it over. Parker took it:
HILLIARD CATHMAN
Hilliard Cathman Associates
14-162 State Plaza, Suite 1100 Albany, NY 12961
Urban & Policy Planning
Resource Apportionment Consultants
518 828-3344 fax 518 828-3388
“Since I retired from state government,” Cathman explained, “I’ve been able to use my contacts and expertise in a broader and more satisfying way. Not limited to New York State any more, nor to one administration.”
Parker extended the card, but Cathman waved it away: “No, keep it. I want you to understand. I am knowledgeable, and I am reliable. In my area. As Mr. Howell was in his, and as he led me to believe you are in yours.”
“I still don’t see where we’re gong,” Parker said.
Cathman looked out at the river, apparently to gather his thoughts. The river was wide here, and moved briskly. It was a hundred miles from here to the harbor and the sea.
Cathman said, “Gambling fever has struck the politicians, I’m afraid. They see it as a safe form of taxation, a way to collect money from the people without causing discontent or taxpayer revolt. The lottery does it, and OTB does it, and casino gambling can do it. Three resort areas in New York State have been designated by the state legislature for legalized gambling. This area is not one of them.”
“Then they’re lucky,” Parker said.
“Yes, they are, but they don’t know it. Foxwood in particular has driven them wild. It’s so close, and it’s so profitable. So a new bill has worked its way through the legislature, and will be signed before the end of the month, which adds a fourth gambling district in New York State.” He gestured outward: “The river.”
“A casino boat?”
“Yes. There are any number of them around America, and they tend to be migratory, as laws change, state by state. The boat which will be used on the Hudson, between Poughkeepsie and Albany, which is at this moment steaming up the Atlantic coast toward its new assignment, was until recently called the Spirit of Biloxi.But there are so many casinos in the Biloxi area now, the competition is so fierce, that the owners of the boat had no problem with the idea of changing its name to the Spirit of the Hudson.”
“Loyalty,” suggested Parker.
“They have nailed their colors to a weathervane,” Cathman agreed. “At this point,” he went on, “because there is a strong anti-gambling faction in the legislature or, that is, several anti-gambling factions, some religious, some practical, some spiteful approval has been given only for a four-month trial period. And, since they have learned from OTB and elsewhere that people will, if given the chance, spend far beyond their income when the gambling bug strikes, for this four-month trial period only, no credit will be allowed.”
Parker frowned. “They can’t do it. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Nevertheless, that is the compromise that has been struck. If the four-month trial is considered a success, and the boat continues to be the Spirit of the Hudson,then credit wagering will be permitted. But during the trial period, no. No credit cards, no checks, no letters of credit.”